‘What Should You Do When Someone You Love Becomes a Men’s Rights Activist?’

The obvious answer to this question is, ‘Listen to what he (or she) has to say’, but that would be too obvious. My thanks to the estimable Zachery Lorentz for pointing me to an article posted in June 2012 on Jezebel, the notoriously misandrous feminist website. I’m of the firm opinion that most of Jezebel’s hate-driven contributors take Stupid pills on prescription, but Anna North’s article suggests she’d just overdosed on them. Evidence for this includes her citing the leading feminist poodle, David Futrelle:

How should one argue with a loved one who’s turned into a misogynist? I talked to David Futrelle of Man Boobz, who is somewhat bearish on MRAs’ ability to change: ‘Unfortunately, in most cases, I don’t think it’s possible to talk someone out of a Men’s Rights obsession. For most of them, it seems to be driven not by facts – they’re happy to simply make up facts to fit their worldview – but by feelings, most obviously by rage at women.’

Hmm… let’s do a gender switch, shall we, and return to the real world?

‘Unfortunately, in most cases, I don’t think it’s possible to talk someone out of a Women’s Rights obsession. For most of them, it seems to be driven not by facts – they’re happy to simply make up facts to fit their worldview – but by feelings, most obviously by rage at men.’

We move on to possibly the single most stupid sentence in the stupid article, penned by Ms North herself:

I wouldn’t ordinarily advocate trying to get to the bottom of a men’s rights activist’s pain — lots of MRAs talk about how much they’d like to inflict pain on women, and frankly, I don’t have much empathy for them.

In the past three or four years in which I’ve had a strong interest in men’s human rights, I haven’t encountered even one MHRA – in person, or online – who’d ‘like to inflict pain on women’. So to which website does Ms North direct us, to back up her ‘lots of MRAs…’ claim? Why, back to David Futrelle’s ‘Man Boobz’. The man must be very proud of himself.